We have an unusual over-wintering duck...unusual for our parts that is. The Northern Shoveler is only normally seen during Spring and Fall migrations, and it is very skittish. I had previously never been closer than about 100 yards of one - and usually 300-400 was more like it. This beautiful fella has been associating with a bunch of mallards in a very small patch of open water. It is also very approachable (coming to within MFD regularly), but difficult to photograph artistically due to the many mallards swimming in the way both in the FG and BG. The best bet is to keep the longest lens on and go for some portraits, which is what I concentrated on doing.
Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1600s., f/8, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, FF, cloned out more than half the specular highlight on the foot, especially the bigger distracting ones (I kept the rest in to retain the wet look).
We get shoveler's in Michigan for a few months a year. Generally not terribly shy, but the darn guys just swim around in circles with their bills in the water feeding all the time! The are beautiful however.
I like this one, bold colors, great foot, well exposed with good head turn.
I certainly don't mind a few highlights on the water birds, and think this is a nice balance.
I'll trade you 500 shovelers for one scrawny snowy owl!! These are our most common migrants and most ponds, lakes and golf courses are filled with them. Even though they are so common here I feel they are one of the most beautiful of all the waterfowl species. Hard to beat a killer drake shoveler for color and form.
Nice looking closeup of this handsome guy and I like the raised foot and the fact that we can see some of the blue and green on the wing. Glad you got to run into this rare migrant for you.
Hope you get more of them soon.
Come join me for a Custom Raptor Workshop starting this November 2019- January 2020.
P.M. me to inquire on dates, pricing and availabilities. Thank You. www.davidsalemphotography.com
My First Northern Shoveler!
Reply With Quote
